DACA program at stake before Supreme Court

WASHINGTON — As hundreds of immigrants and their allies rallied outside, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday that will decide the future of a program that allows more than 700,000 young adults who came to the country illegally as children to live and work in the United States.

In one of the most highly anticipated cases of the Supreme Court’s term, Democratic attorneys general and lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was wrongfully terminated by President Donald Trump without a real policy basis.

But lawyers for the Trump administration countered that President Barack Obama lacked the authority to create the DACA program in 2012 and it has operated illegally since.

The case pits presidential power against immigration law – one of the most controversial issues of the Trump administration.

The case will be decided by five conservative and four liberal justices in the coming months. Based on their questions, justices Clarence

Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh appeared likely to support the Trump administration based on beliefs that Trump's decision is beyond the power of the courts to review. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor seemed to favor the arguments of the proDACA lawyers by suggesting the Trump administration should have more explanation to justify their decision. Chief Justice John Roberts may be the deciding vote again between the conservative and liberal camps.

About 4,000 DACA recipients live in Connecticut, while 7,000 could have been eligible for the program before it was frozen, according the Connecticut Attorney General’s office. Fortyfive Connecticut residents rode in a bus to D.C. Tuesday morning to be present for the Supreme Court arguments.

“I wanted to come here to let the judges, the Supreme Court and this administration know that young people in this country are not afraid to fight for our right to stay here and live our lives freely,” said Anthony Barroso, a 26yearold DACA recipient and New Haven resident.

The DACA program allows the children of undocumented immigrants to access a renewable, temporary status to attend college and work in the U.S. as long as they followed the rules and had no criminal record. If the court sides with the Trump administration, thousands of young immigrants may be vulnerable to deportation.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said the Trump administration’s attempt to rescind DACA is “unlawful and wrong and cruel and pointless,” at a press conference in Willimantic, Conn. Connecticut is among 16 states whose Democratic attorneys general challenged Trump’s decision to end DACA.

Noel J. Francisco, solicitor general of the Department of Justice, said in 2017 a lower court held that the expansion of DACA was likely unlawful, a judgment affirmed by the Supreme Court.

“In the face of those decisions, the Department of Homeland Security reasonably determined that it no longer wished to retain the DACA policy based on its belief that the policy was illegal, its serious doubts about its illegality, and its general opposition to broad nonenforcement policies,” said Francisco, who argued on behalf of the Trump administration Tuesday.

DACA was created by an Obama executive order, after Congress failed to pass the Dream Act containing providing status for these young immigrants. It was rescinded by the Trump administration in Sept. 2017.

Trump said at the time, he was not interested in “punishing children,” but his attitude toward DACA recipients appears to have grown less sympathetic, although he said he would pursue a deal with Democrats in Congress to keep the socalled “dreamers” in the U.S.

“Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from ‘angels,’” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “Some are very tough, hardened criminals. President Obama said he had no legal right to sign order, but would anyway. If Supreme Court remedies with overturn, a deal will be made with Dems for them to stay!”

Multiple lower court cases fighting the end of the program have kept DACA in operation since 2017 and forestalled deportations.

A federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 2018 decided it was likely that the way the Trump administration ended DACA was capricious, arbitrary and unlawful. That ruling came in response to two cases. One was filed by a coalition of 16 attorneys general, including former Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen. The attorneys general argued ending the program was harmful to the economies of their states, as well as “devastating” to the young immigrants, also known as “dreamers.”

“We stand together as a firewall to protect and defend each one of you,” Tong told students at Eastern Connecticut State University Tuesday. Tong, whose father came to the U.S. on a tourist visa and overstayed, said the issue is “extraordinarily personal” for him.

Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system President Mark Ojakian said, “I stand here today to say unequivocally… that DACA students make our institutions stronger, make our state stronger, make our communities stronger, make our nation stronger.”

Another case challenging the halt of DACA was filed by six young DACA recipients from New York, represented by the Yale Law School Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic. Three Yale Law School professors, Marisol Orihuela, Muneer Ahmad and Michael J. Wishnie, represented these plaintiffs before the Supreme Court Tuesday, but did not make oral arguments.

While these cases and others sought to preserve DACA, another lawsuit initiated by Texas and other states in 2018 challenged the legality of DACA and prevented new applicants from accessing the program.

To be eligible for DACA, applicants had to show that they had arrived in the U.S. before they were 16 years old, were no older than 30, had lived in the country for the previous five years, were a high school graduate or a veteran, and had committed no serious crimes. The status lasts for two years and allows recipients to work legally. The status is renewable, but it does not provide a path to citizenship.

Barroso said he has been using DACA program since 2014, after arriving in the U.S. as a youth from Ecuador.

“Besides allowing me to work legally and have a temporary social security [number] and be able to have a driver’s license, it made me feel like a valid person in society,” he said. “It made me feel like I didn’t have to struggle, when people asked me for identification, to prove who I was or that I exist here. That alone really changed my life in many ways.”

Barrosa traveled with a busload of Connecticut residents that left Hartford at 2 a.m., and after picking up more supporters in Bridgeport at 3:30 a.m., drove to Washington D.C. Tuesday morning to demonstrate in favor of DACA.

Anghy Idrovo, a 23yearold Danbury resident, was among them. Idrovo is not a DACA recipient, but is an undocumented person who came to the U.S. from Ecuador at age 12, she said.

“This is not the first time Trump has attacked the immigrant community,” said Idrovo, an organizer for Connecticut Students for a Dream. “Even though I am not a DACA recipient because of a qualification I didn’t meet, I want to acknowledge that DACA was passed because of the resilience and fight of young people and undocumented parents, when Obama was president. For me being here means yes let’s fight for DACA, but yes let’s also fight for the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.”

As rain and wind buffeted the crowds outside the Supreme Court, Idrovo and other Connecticut residents joined in chants of “Home is here!” and “Undocumented! Unafraid!”

James Patino, a 16yearold Danbury High School student, made the trip after learning about activism supporting DACA at his school, he said. Patino is a U.S. citizen, he said, and does not know any DACA recipients, but he was motivated to come because half of his family immigrated from Ecuador.

“I wanted to show my support for them and the many people here who have a dream, have an American dream, who can fulfil it through the DACA law,” he said.

DACA recipients have bipartisan sympathy, but Democrats and Republicans disagree about what immigration status they should be afforded on a longterm basis. Resolving the DACA dispute has also become a bargaining chip in a larger immigration debate that includes controversial issues like a wall at the U.SMexico border and mandatory use of employee verification systems by businesses.

The reinstitution of DACA by the Supreme Court would not provide a solution for dreamers who are aging out of the DACA program or millions of other undocumented immigrants.

“I am hoping that when I am 30, we won’t need DACA,” Barroso said. “I am hoping that true immigration reform will happen.”